


Trust

by hops



Series: the only life you could save [7]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Best Friends, Comfort, Episode: e060-066 The Stolen Century Parts 1-7, Foreshadowing, Gen, IPRE Era, have u heard they’re best friends??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 12:06:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15662904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hops/pseuds/hops
Summary: Taako finds Lucretia crying on the deck. A promise is made.





	Trust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epersonae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epersonae/gifts).



Taako finds Lucretia on the deck at the cusp of dawn, the last of this plane’s stars melting back into the purplish pink of the coming sunrise. She’s laying on her back. It’s not usually her style, wrinkling up her robe, letting the sheen of dew on the ship into her hair, but she clearly hasn’t slept, and there’s clearly something on her mind.

He walks along the deck to where she’s laying on the silvery metal surface up front near the bow. If she hears him coming, she doesn’t react.

“Hey, Lucy-lu,” he says, his voice even more gentle than he means for it to be.

When he looks down at her, her eyes are closed, and she’s crying. She looks completely relaxed and completely destroyed.

“Oh,” he half-says, half-breathes.

He gets down beside her and sits next to her with his arms wrapped around his knees. When he puts his chin down, he feels helpless, useless, even. He’s not cut out to help her, but he’s here, and she needs… she needs someone. A friend.

She draws a shuddering breath. His stomach sinks as he watches the shallow rise and fall of her chest. It crushes him to think about it all, everything they’ve been doing, the decades they’ve been running… it’s exhausting. It’s far too much for anyone to bear, and every year the calls get closer as they try to escape.

“We’re doing what we can, babe,” Taako says quietly. He lays a hand on her forehead and runs his fingers through her curls. “We just have to keep…”

Her bottom lip trembles; he sees her fighting back the urge to sob and he wants more than anything to pull the Lucretia of cycles past back to the forefront. Of course, she had grown stronger and more confident in the cycles since she was left alone to fend for herself. But there’s a certain something gone from Lucretia now, something that Taako isn’t sure will come back. And for that he can’t help but feel angry. It was injustice to rob her of herself. But what could they do anymore?

“I can’t sleep,” she manages to say with her shaking voice. “I can’t get it out of my head. I know it was years ago, but… I… I thought I would have to fend for myself forever. I was sure I was going to die, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t die. I had to save us.”

Taako’s throat closes as if to sob, but no tears come to his eyes. Her pain is unimaginable. An ocean he could never hope to cross, a distance he’d never wish on anyone.

“You saved us,” he says. “You survived.”

“Sometimes I wonder…”

Taako looks at her, wondering if she’s asking what he thinks she is. He lays down beside her on the deck and looks at the stars directly above, the last holdout of deep purple as pink and orange take over the horizon far below. There’s still enough dark to keep the focus off her face.

“Is this forever?” she asks quietly. “Are we just going to run from this, forever?”

Taako folds his hands over his stomach, turning the thought over in his mind: sizing it up, letting it steer his mind to and fro, scaring him, filling him with hope, all at the same time.

“No,” he says finally. “No, we won’t let it be.”

She lets out a wet laugh and then dissolves into tears.

“I don’t know why I’m so…” she trails off as she sobs. “I don’t know. I don’t know what we’re doing anymore. I don’t know why we’re doing this. Why us? Why— why me? I’m just—“

He wants to tell her that he’s never met anyone so smart, so brave, so strong. Even before she’d faced down that terrible year, he saw her slowly come into herself, gently blooming into a woman full of laughter and knowledge and grace. She’s not “just” anything. She’s Lucretia. She’s his best friend.

“I feel like a such an idiot,” she says quietly.

He’s dumbfounded and speechless. He lays there under the constellations and tries to think of a way to tell her, but there’s just nothing. He’s not cut out for comfort. He’s not made for it.

“Me too,” he says instead. She sniffs and it crushes him all at once. He wants to make it okay, turn back decades and bring her back to the beach where they’d laughed and swam and cooked and painted and found so much joy. He wants to see her smile again and he has no fucking clue how to do it. Tears burn in his eyes. “We can be idiots together, then.”

She inhales and it shakes in her throat.

“Magnus is already onboard, natch. He founded the club.” He smiles through tears. “Oh, yup, and Merle. That makes more than half the crew idiots, bubbeleh. I’d say you’re in good company, but uh, we’re not exactly competent company.”

She laughs a little again, slowly emerging from the onslaught of her sadness. Taako is a little lighter, at least. He sticks his hand out with exaggeration and she takes it, allowing him to squeeze it tight.

“My point is, we got you, Creesh,” he says. The sun rising slowly up over the horizon paints the whole sky with light. “I’m with you and I’m not leaving.”  
  
He separates their hands to raise a pinky and hold it out for her to take. She nods, wiping tears with her free hand, and hooks her pinky with his.  
  
“Thanks, Taako,” she says softly. His heart twists at the sound of her weakened voice.

He holds her hand up and uses his index finger to tap one of their old signals into the palm of her hand. _Trust_. She holds back tears as she taps it back to him.

“We’re gonna be alright,” he says. “I promise.”


End file.
